Amanda Hutton was jailed for 15 years after she was found guilty of the manslaughter of her son, Hamzah Khan Photo: Andrew McCaren/Ross Parry Agency By Edward Malnick11:20AM GMT 13 Nov 2013Follow
A minister has said he has “deep concerns” over an official report into the death of Hamzah Khan, a toddler who was starved to death by his mother.
Edward Timpson, the children’s minister, said there were a series of “glaring absences” in the review.
He singled out the “failure” of the serious case review to fully explain the actions “taken, or not taken” by authorities to intervene.
The review, published by the Bradford Safeguarding Children’s Board, found that Hamzah Khan’s death “could not have been predicted”, but said he was “let down” by systems.
The report comes a day after Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, cited Hamzah's case in a warning that lessons had not been learned from the tragic deaths of children, also including Baby P and Daniel Pelka, who had been failed by authorities.
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It concluded that Hamzah’s mother, Amanda Hutton, misled health and school workers about Hamzah’s whereabouts, allowing him to “disappear ‘from the radar’ of the services”.
Hamzah’s body was discovered lying mummified in squalid conditions in his mother's home in September 2011.
Last month a jury convicted Hutton of manslaughter after hearing that she had no regard for her son's welfare.
The trial heard that Hamzah died on Dec 15 2009, while Hutton was at a supermarket - his death going undetected by authorities for almost two years.
On Wednesday morning Nick Frost, professor of social work at Leeds Met University and the independent chairman of the BSCB, said the various agencies involved in Hamzah’s case, including police and doctors, failed to carry out a coordinated “assessment” of Hutton’s household.
“Such an assessment may have given a comprehensive picture of circumstances in the household and should have led to a multi-agency meeting,” he said.
Prof Frost also suggested that one of Hamzah’s siblings twice raised concerns that “all was not well in the family”. The sibling “could have been listened to more carefully,” he concluded.
But in a letter to Prof Frost Mr Timpson outlined a series of “missed opportunities” to protect Hamzah and his siblings, which he said were not addressed properly in the report.
The prosecution at Hutton’s trial had asked how it was possible that a child had “starved to death in 21st century England”.
Hamzah’s decomposed body was discovered only after a police community support officer visited the house on her second day in the job and sensed that Hutton was “hiding something” when she refused to let her in.
Hutton, 43, the daughter of a nurse, came from a middle class background and was "well–spoken", something which appeared to have “thrown” some of those who came into contact with her.
She was working as a care assistant for the elderly when she met Aftab Khan, a taxi driver, and had her first child in 1989, aged 18.
The couple had seven more children, including Hamzah, who was born on June 17, 2005.
By then Hutton was well known to police, who had been called to her home repeatedly for years following beatings by Khan.
They answered 999 calls from Hutton eight times between 2004 and 2008.
Following the death of Hutton's mother on Christmas Eve 2005 she turned to drink, and repeatedly asked the police, doctors and social workers for help.
In the year after Hamzah's birth, she asked police for help in getting away from her abusive husband, asked her GP for help with depression and asked the local social services child protection unit for advice.
Hamzah, meanwhile, was slowly starving. Having been seen at home by a midwife six days after his birth, and by a health visitor two weeks later, he was never again seen by a health professional.
Health visitors who went to the home more than six times following missed immunisations eventually gave up after Hutton slammed the door in their face.
Hamzah was not registered with a GP until he was 15 months old, but he was never taken there, and Hutton's GP deleted the child from her patient list rather than inquiring after his welfare.
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